I'm into my second year with Liquigas, and after a first year where I had no idea (and got most of my riders tired by mid-year) I am now taking a more strategic approach, thanks to a range of fitness calculators. However, I have found that the maximum fitness for a number of my riders has dropped really quickly. For example, Nibali has only raced 15 days and his max fitness is 63/13; while Di Luca has raced 25 days and has maximum 73/20. Neither has been at their max for more than a couple of days. Could this be something to do with pushing them too hard last season? I thought their fitness didn't drop till they were fully fatigued or had raced 40 days?
Ok, several questions, did you have your riders at 100& training at any point and when and how long?
Refer to the fitness training guide on this site to figure out how to control fitness. You probably are not using the manual fitness adjustments right. Several things, one is that if you have the fitness training settings too high for a certain trained number then fatigue will increase a LOT. Second, keeping your riders at max fitness and 100% training will max out your fatigue bar in about a month or so of that.
Finally, about Nibali, his racing fitness should definitely be higher but keep in mind that the racing fitness depends on how much racing he does. The more he does up to 50, the higher the maximum to 20.
Their fitness DOES drop after roughly half full bars so you're pushing them WAY too hard. They should be able to peak about 3 to 4 times a year if you do it right. If you have a stage racer peaking for the Giro and Vuelta, you should be able to get the vuelta done at roughly 85-90 max fitness. Again look at the guides for fitness in PCM 07/08 articles. They're a great help.
Max fitness possible at any point is 99/100 with 80+19 possible.
Racing fitness progresses like this, after first day, 1/2, 2nd day, 2/3 or something. It goes up slowly and then hits a max of 20.
I'm into my second year with Liquigas, and after a first year where I had no idea (and got most of my riders tired by mid-year) I am now taking a more strategic approach, thanks to a range of fitness calculators. However, I have found that the maximum fitness for a number of my riders has dropped really quickly. For example, Nibali has only raced 15 days and his max fitness is 63/13; while Di Luca has raced 25 days and has maximum 73/20. Neither has been at their max for more than a couple of days. Could this be something to do with pushing them too hard last season? I thought their fitness didn't drop till they were fully fatigued or had raced 40 days?
If you mean with fully fatigued that their fatigue bar is completely yellow, you're wrong. If the fatigue bar is completely yellow their max trainings fitness has dropped to 60. When your fatigue bar has turned for 2/5 yellow (something like that, I'm not sure) your max trainings fitness starts dropping. So be very careful to not fill up that bar too quickly and make you riders fitness peaks short or not very high.
And I'm guessing that the 13 race fitness from Nibali is because he raced so little. Your race fitness starts out at 0/10 (correct me if I'm wrong) and when you start racing it will eventually go up to 9/11, 10/12, 11/13, 12/14, etc (Again correct me if I'm wrong). So I'm guessing Nibali's race fitness hasn't been higher then 11 jet.
